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  What had they done, why was he doing it, why can’t you just stop, the dumb bleaters or their dumb, dickless teachers might ask while he was still punching, or later while he was still smirking or shrugging or just staring at the white splendour of his new K-Swisses and chewing broken skin off his knuckles. Stupid questions. Missing the point. They knew the answer already, or they wouldn’t have asked the questions with tears and snot and blood and breaking words in their throats. He’d learned the answer before he even knew how to put the questions into words. Daddy was an excellent teacher.

  Bony knees forking and the cards in his spokes clattering – his baby sister would hate him just a little bit more when she discovered her Pokemon set was incomplete - he pedalled into Pemberton Court like an angry cicada. Stacked in a four-story slab of concrete and pebble-dash, the flats wrapped themselves around a courtyard of ancient Fords and Vauxhalls leaking sump oil, grass flecked with dogshit and trees in full leaf blinding CCTV cameras mounted too far above street level.

  Skidding to a stop, he sniffed the air and listened. No breath of wind disturbed the glistening of sweat on his bruised skin or the labouring gasps as his lungs bulged against ribs that were made of broken glass. A memory of cinders tainted the air as a blanched sun cleared the murk above the top floor. The estate’s pulse had slowed; the barking dogs too drowsy to clamour for blood or love or a life beyond a piss-soaked porch and a scrap of grass, the screaming babies too hot to fill their lungs with more warm air, the boy racers sleeping it off rather than splitting the air with bass, fat exhaust or squealing rubber.

  BMX stashed behind a bush with needles, condoms and windblown chocolate wrappers, Kevin found the stairwell, smiled at the inevitable stink of piss and cabbage, the worthless bike with buckled wheels chained to the banister, the tags sprayed in scarlet like a faded tattoo over municipal pink proving he was on someone else’s ground. Trainers slapping and squealing on linoleum, he dragged his aching carcass up two flights to the first floor and stopped, gasping, slumped against the wall.

  Nicotine and something sweeter found him, dragging his eyes along the balcony with its smashed TV’s, split bin bags, headless dolls, wheel-less toy cars, bedraggled pot-plants. Scuffed paintwork and patches of plywood marked out Ali Bongo’s flat, the numbers long since chiselled off, but there were no signs of life there. A skein of cigarette smoke drifted from the door of the next flat along. Beaded curtains rattled and he forced himself erect, shoulders back.

  A hand emerged, fingers stained khaki squeezing a roll-up almost burned to the knuckle, then a wrist, a grinning red imp tattooed on it. As the girl stepped out to taste the air, Kevin took in the gauzy, thigh-length negligee she was almost wearing, the way it draped from puckered nipples and cupped her naked arse. He stuck his hands in his pockets; let his eyes bulge and his tongue loll. She flicked thick strands of bleached hair out of her eyes, saw him and pinned his gaze with her own.

  “What you fucking staring at, nonce?”

  “You’re looking well fit today, Whitney.”

  “Barry,” she shouted back into the flat, flicking the fag-end over the balcony. “Well get a good look, maggot, ‘cause it’s all you’ll ever get.”

  “Might be enough for now,” he said, jostling his hands in his pockets and waggling his tongue.

  “Barry, business,” she shouted again, drawing a distant grunt from inside. “Looks like you’ve had one good slap down. You looking for another or you actually buying something?”

  “I ain’t buying. Ain’t in the buying game no more. Got business of my own. Someone dossing with your neighbour owes me.”

  “Tough shit.”

  “Fuck off, it ain’t.”

  “Ain’t got a clue, have you. ‘Bout how things work.”

  “We ain’t at school now, Whitney. Don’t look like them GCSE’s got you any further than shaggin’ old Barry. And that’s only fifty yards from your mam’s, I reckon.”

  “I’ll tell you what I know, shithead. This is where Barry lives so that makes everything you can see Barry’s. He don’t mind you selling seeds and stalks to students. He might mind you coming over here and pissing on his lamp-post.”

  Kevin broke eye contact with Whitney, resisting the urge to cuff her, to see her splayed on the floor rather than squared up to him with hands on hips. He spat over the balcony and heard the gush and spatter of Barry’s first piss of the day. He should walk away, but he’d just be taking a bloodless beating. To stand his ground meant a bit more pain and maybe a few less teeth, not a bad price for the world to know he had bollocks.

  “You’ll want to be nice to me, some time soon.” Dropping his eyes to the floor, he slouched back towards the stairwell.

  “Come back when you’ve grown up, dickhead.”

  He hauled himself to the second floor, wheezing again but not resting this time, crossed the length of the block to the opposite stairwell and vaulted down the stairs, jarring ribs and spine and seeing flecks of broken lightning. A glance through the fire door showed him Whitney going back inside, hands cupping a new smoke.

  Flattened against the wall, he found himself outside Ali Bongo’s flat. He knocked, quietly, pointlessly, then harder, teeth gritted as the sound echoed around the court. Did he hear a grating noise, a window sliding, something about to be jammed against the door? What was he doing? He had to have this, couldn’t not have it.

  He reached into his boxers and pulled out a souvenir of thieving for scrap; an inch-thick length of insulated copper wire, a beautiful cosh with jagged ends; easy on the hand, hard on the head. Turning, he gripped the door frame on either side, braced himself and kicked hard at the lock, only then noticing the cracked and pitted paintwork surrounding it.

  It gave with amazing ease and an unmistakable crunch of splintered wood and fractured glass; the job must have been half done already. Counting out the seconds with heaving breaths, Kevin darted inside, heard a bellow and thudding steps from next door, flung the door shut, saw it bounce uselessly open again from a split and warped frame, looked for something to wedge against it, seeing only a mound of mail, beer cans, encrusted filth everywhere and a window wedged wide open with a flat-screen TV. He winced at the high-octane reek of alcohol, sweat and piss, and something else. A roll-up burned in an ash-tray.

  He ran to the window and clutched the sill, to see Firth looking back up at him as he rounded a corner, his blotched face and limping, stooped gait making him almost a reflection; or perhaps a prediction, he thought, as a bulky figure filled the door to the flat brandishing a baseball bat.

  Time was strolling away from him and he was stumbling to keep up. Harkness winced as the luminous digits of the bedside clock on his undisturbed side of the bed tumbled into eight am and it started bleating at him. Had he really imagined he’d need a wake up call or had that been someone else’s idea? His phone joined the chorus with a vibrating rhythm that sent it skittering slowly across the bedside table as if the caller was willing it to his ear.

  He threw the fresh, white linen shirt into the laundry basket, its collar speckled with blood from his attempt at a close shave. It fell short and wrapped itself around his feet as he lurched for the phone. He kicked the shirt into the air, noticed his socks were mismatched, caught the shirt, clasped it to the blood seeping from the nicks on his chin and grabbed the phone as the call cleared. The number had been withheld, which meant work and probably someone or something important. An accusing list of other missed calls over the last fifteen minutes confirmed his suspicion that he’d succumbed to a micro-nap in the shower.

  He’d needed more of a cleansing than the scalding hot water had given him, but the pelting of water had drowned out all other thoughts and sensations for a few welcome moments of oblivion, the power shower proving itself again one of the few pricy mod cons he knew he couldn’t give up easily. He knew this for what it was; a parting thought. Gone was a yearning to make things right with Hayley, replaced by the first draft of an exit strategy.

  Every bo
ok, CD, DVD, electrical item, canvas print and floor cushion now begged to be inventoried, allocated and labelled, an agreeable if rueful exercise for a lazy Sunday, as if the division of a shared life could ever be so simple and anaemic. Yet the first draft had failed to list the messy carving up of intertwined friends and finances; the junking of shared intimacies and experiences; the admission that love had dwindled into wishful thinking; the knowledge that it was his fault, his passion for delusion the only one that still burned; the need for a conversation that was honest rather than expedient; the need to scratch the itch beneath his skull.

  He pushed it all to the back of his mind, three soot-choked murder victims more of an excuse than he usually needed, dabbed at the beads of blood still welling from his chin and set about making himself presentable. Five minutes later, he prowled the kitchen, already glistening with sweat beneath the lightest suit he owned, having dumped the bin bag containing the sulphurous remains of his usual suit in the garage. He stopped suddenly, as if slapped, and drew in a deep breath. He would go to the car, make his calls, sketch out a plan of attack, untangle his thoughts, get underway and become a professional again.

  A movement caught his attention from the front garden, a flowing curve of sly and sinuous grace. He stood in the shadow of the door between kitchen and lounge and the sun beat down on the lounge window, so the generally twitchy tabby from next door but one failed to see him as it scanned enemy territory with amber eyes and glided across the turf. Neither man nor beast would pay a guiltless visit in this manner and Harkness felt compelled to take a minute to prevent an all too familiar crime which generally resulted in proud mounds of glistening excrement in the centre of his lawn.

  He kicked off his shoes, took the plastic lemon from its place near the patio door, slipped outside and jogged lightly down the side passage. Knowing his foe was alert to danger and fleet of paw, he came out shooting. As he rounded the corner, he squeezed the plastic lemon, sending the stinging liquid arcing towards the cat which had parked on its haunches, back curved and tail quivering in excremental ecstasy. It started and turned just in time to blink lemon juice into its own eyes, hissed, sneezed, span blindly and rocketed into the street, trailing shit.

  The cat died in the same continuous, spastic movement. The nearly new Renault Scenic carrying a mother and her three young children swerved to avoid it, breaking its back with one of its wheels rather than hitting it squarely with the radiator. Harkness knew precisely what kind of day he was having as the Renault smashed into the boot of the Mondeo he’d borrowed with a crunch that deadened all other sound, leaving both cars skewed across the narrow residential street. A slick of glossy fluid formed beneath the Renault’s engine and at the mouth of the cat, which thrashed madly on either side of a hot tyre-mark, body trying and failing to obey a dying impulse to flee.

  Harkness backed into the shadows to gnaw his knuckles and form a new plan as the chorus of childish sobbing began. Not for the first time, he pondered the gulf that lay between causing a thing and taking responsibility for it. Then a more practical thought intervened: Where could he find a shovel?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  At the County Hospital Mortuary, Harkness printed and signed his name for the fourth time that morning, glowered at by Slowey.

  The first time had been at the insistence of the driver of the crumpled Renault Scenic. She’d been equally unimpressed with having to accept a glimpse of his warrant card in lieu of insurance details, and the fact that the scrap-yard Mondeo was still driveable. He’d suppressed his amusement at life’s small ironies when a wailing child confirmed that the late Mr Fuzzy was in fact the family cat. His offer of a quiet coup de grace with a shovel had not been well received.

  He was quite sure he’d catch some static later for not reporting a ‘police vehicle accident’ – which technically speaking this had been. Yet all departments would be minimally staffed today to cut down on bank holiday overtime payments, and he was in no mood to wait for one of the lucky few uniform duty sergeants to turn a simple prang into a neighbourhood spectacle.

  The second signature had completed the statement covering his enquiries so far. Biddle had insisted on it before he flew the coop again. “Without continuity of evidence,” he’d loftily and pointedly opined, “we may as well walk into court with our trousers around our ankles singing ‘I Should Be So Lucky’.”

  “An enchanting image. Found the parents yet?” Harkness had asked.

  “To ID the bodies or surrender the suspect?”

  “Both. Either.”

  “Prison Service put Dale’s parents in Nottingham. Local nick is sending a van full of sensitive types to the house any hour now to break the news and turn the place over.”

  “And the other set?”

  “I’m working on it. Neighbours don’t seem to know who or where her parents are.”

  The DI had been preoccupied with setting up and staffing a new enquiry room and, visibly relieved to see him clean-shaven and clear-headed, was receptive to the suggestion that he handle the post mortem while Biddle filled in as office manager.

  Printing out and signing a statement he’d all but completed hours earlier hadn’t kept him glued to a seat for as long as Biddle had envisaged. As soon as Biddle sloped off for another cigarette break, he’d left another spare jacket on the back of his chair and taken his leave. Happily, Harkness had dumped the Mondeo on double yellows out of sight of the nick – confident that traffic wardens weren’t worth double-time – the better to make a quick escape.

  The third signature had saved a grateful receptionist at A&E the trouble of arranging a lift home for Slowey. Slowey, his wounds cleansed of crusted blood but his face still inflamed and mottled, had almost looked pleased to see Harkness until he noticed the change of clothes draped over one arm.

  “I’ll give you a lift home, Ken,” he’d said, steering the Mondeo onto Greetwell Road, past the red-brick Victorian edifice of HMP Lincoln. “Eventually. I need your considerable investigative acumen right now. If you’re too poorly, just say the word.”

  “I’m fine, by the way. Nothing broken, just cuts and swelling.” Slowey had replied. “Oh, and a concussion. I might puke at any time and ruin this lovely upholstery.”

  “That’s good to know. I didn’t like to pry.”

  Slowey had shrugged and dry-swallowed a handful of pills as Harkness turned off Greetwell Road again to park in a disabled bay outside the Mortuary. That department’s guests were undoubtedly incapacitated, but they surely had little need for a parking space.

  The Mortuary squatted in the shadow of the Maternity Wing and appeared to sport a large chimney which frequently belched black smoke. The fact that the chimney in fact belonged to the site boiler house didn’t detract from the NHS’s apparent desire to demonstrate a cradle to grave service.

  “I’ve spent some hours at both of these places,” Slowey had said, levering himself from the car in an intricate sequence of cracks and gasps. “Hatching and dispatching. Plenty of blood and guts either way, but I think I prefer the morgue. Less screaming and the punters are a bit more biddable.”

  “Whatever would Mrs Slowey think?”

  “I expect she’d agree. So, to business. I guess I’ve suspended my sick leave to come and bag bits and bobs and look after the evidence trail while you mull and ponder and gawp and so forth. Am I right?”

  “Attaboy. I’ll owe you one, too. A big one, mind.”

  “I am and will remain agape with expectation.”

  “Nice to see you again, Ken. How are the wife and the kids?”

  “I’m Rob, Rob Harkness,” he said, clasping the pathologist’s hand without thinking too hard about where that hand spent much of its time. “My marital prospects are receding by the hour and if I’ve got any kids, I’d better make sure all my DNA samples and payslips are accounted for.”

  “Still quite the gadabout, eh, Ken? Well, we’re keeping each other out of mischief today. And a better use for a Bank Holiday than household
toil. Ought to warn you though – when I tackle those flat-pack jobbies, I always lose a few bits and pieces.”

  Harkness allowed himself to enjoy the studied vagueness of the Home Office Pathologist, Keith Ogilvy. The paisley cravat, rumpled shirt, tweed suit and venerable brogues might have been contrived by a gentleman’s outfitter to make the wearer appear expensively dishevelled, able to afford the best without having to care about appearances. The ensemble wouldn’t be complete without Ogilvy’s careful habit of forgetting or fudging the names of those around him.

  “As it happens, this actually is Ken; Ken Slowey.”

  Ogilvy inclined his head to study Slowey through his bifocals. For a moment, the angular tension of his long limbs and the intent gleam of his eyes reminded Harkness of the preying mantis the man became in the witness box, poised, patient and ready to rip apart junior barristers at the first disparaging insinuation.

  “Ah, another Ken. Are you sure he’s in the right place? He looks frightful. I usually insist on death before I start cutting.”

  Ogilvy moved into a side-room and swapped his tweeds for scrubs, gloves, mask and a bandana emblazoned with a grinning skull and crossbones as Harkness recounted the story so far. Ogilvy periodically paused to mutter into a dictaphone. The mortuary assistant drifted silently into the office and handed masks, overshoes, hairnets and threadbare gowns, stiff and sharp with detergent, to Harkness and Slowey. Already clad in scrubs and a glistening apron, he returned to his steaming mug, adding caffeine to the tang of formaldehyde, ammonia and unpacked viscera.